Tracie Wagman

Publisher, Help We’ve Got Kids

Tracie is the co-owner of Help We’ve Got Kids. While raising her two children, Tracie found the book, and the website, of Help to be invaluable. She liked it so much she recently bought the company with a fellow mom!

Tracie is passionate about the environment and about helping families have better lives. In her past life, Tracie worked in both retail and telecom, most recently as co-President of Pistachio, and before that at Bell Canada. Tracie was also the Vice-President of the board at Yorktown Family Services, is actively involved with the G(irls) 20 Summit, Environmental Defence Fund, and has recently joined the board of Canopy.

Tracie knows how hard it is to balance work with home life, and keep everyone in the family happy. “In real life” there are no perfect answers – it’s a never-ending quest to stay sane and also bring up happy and competent children. (Oh yeah, and keep the marriage together too.)

My oldest is in sixth grade and one day a couple of weeks ago I showed up at school to pick her up and she said: "I'm going to walk home alone with Cathy." My first reaction was: OK, great, less driving for me and more time for errands! Then it hit me: she was walking home alone! But there are cars and strangers and scary things out there. Was she going to be OK?

It's completely normal want to protect your kids when they come home crying because someone was blatantly mean to them. But isn't it true that dealing with these situations helps build character? And if they can't deal with these situations and only rely on us, aren't we setting them up for failure in the future?

My business partner Deb and I have always considered ourselves feminists. However, that word seems to be fully loaded these days. Neither of us believe women HAVE to stay home with their kids. But nor do we believe that our frame of reference should be that both parents have to be at work full time and outsourcing the "nuisance" of child rearing to someone else.

The movie "Bully" ends with a call for other children to stand up and help when they witness a bullying situation. The premise is that if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. But is it fair to put the burden on children to speak up and help when they see someone being bullied? Is it really realistic?

Balance? Sure. Whatever. Here's the truth: there is no balance. The truth is my needs change year after year and so do the needs of my family. Nothing is perfect. Nope. When I was a full-time stay-at-home mom with young kids, I went nuts. When I worked full time, I was so filled with guilt it nearly killed me.

Mothers compare parenting skills. It's what we do. We glance at the mom scolding her child at the grocery store and think, "SHE has clearly has lost control of this situation." But when it comes to close friends who understand our circumstances, we expect support, not judgment.